"monument" for V. Tatlin

Medium

Cool white flourescent light with fixture

Dimensions

96 x 32 x 5 (243.8 x 77.5 x 12.7cm)

Accession number

86.67

Object label

Eight standard white fluorescent
light tubes and their metal fixtures comprise Dan Flavin’s minimalist sculpture.
The use of everyday materials, a common strategy of minimalist artists, served
to overcome the gap that normally separates an art object from its viewers. Flavin’s
work generates ambient light that reaches into the viewer’s space. The form,
resembling a skyscraper, refers to a never-realized, but nonetheless influential,
monument to an organization supporting Communist revolution designed by the Russian
constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin in 1920. It was to be a spiraling steel
framework thirteen hundred feet tall in which rotating glass rooms would be
suspended. Though utterly impractical engineering-wise, it remains an influential
symbol of the artist’s efforts to combine art and technology. Flavin’s
“monument,” despite its low-tech, small-scale nature, pays homage to Tatlin’s
futuristic, utopian ideals.

Collection

Collection

"monument" for V. Tatlin

Dan Flavin

Eight standard white fluorescent
light tubes and their metal fixtures comprise Dan Flavin’s minimalist sculpture.
The use of everyday materials, a common strategy of minimalist artists, served
to overcome the gap that normally separates an art object from its viewers. Flavin’s
work generates ambient light that reaches into the viewer’s space. The form,
resembling a skyscraper, refers to a never-realized, but nonetheless influential,
monument to an organization supporting Communist revolution designed by the Russian
constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin in 1920. It was to be a spiraling …